Finding A Quality (And Affordable) Web Host

Written by Matthew Coers

Your web host is company that actually houses your website. While it is possible to host your own website using a computer in your home or office, it is cheaper and easier for new website owners to work with an established web hosting company. When choosing your web hosting company, you should consider three issues:

Price – Generally speaking you should be able to find a good shared hosting plan for somewhere between $5 and $30 per month.

Hosting Technologies – There are different types of server technologies, and a number of “add-on” software products that some web hosting companies bundle into their offerings. Generally speaking, more software that is included in your plan, higher price for your hosting services.

Support – Depending on your level of sophistication in dealing with web technologies, you may want to consider paying a bit extra for a hosting company that provides better support packages. Of course, if you have a friend or family member that has skills in this area, or you are planning to hire a custom website designer or developer, then you can probably forgo paying extra for support.

When you are starting out with a new website, your primary concern with a web hosting company is going to be price. You do not need to pay a lot of money for extra bandwidth or other frills. By time you need extra bandwidth, you will have income stream to pay for it.

Web Hosting Technologies

Your primary concern with web hosting technologies is to make sure that host you select supports software you plan to use to create and serve your web pages. You will also need to make sure that any additional functionality you wish to include in your website is supported by hosting company.

Server Technologies - You will need to make sure that your hosting company supports whatever server technologies you will require for your site. For new site owners this is usually not an issue since your web pages will be programmed in HTML that is supported by all web-serving technologies. However, if you are hiring a contract web developer to create a database-driven web application using PHP, ASP, JSP, or ColdFusion, then you should make sure your hosting company supports whatever language your developer is using. If you have questions, you can probably have them answered by sales or support line for your prospective hosting company.

Development Technologies - If you are using Microsoft FrontPage to develop your website, then you will need to select a web hosting company that supports FrontPage extensions. If you are unsure about whether your web host supports your development software, then sales representative or support line should be able to answer your questions.

E-commerce/Shopping Cart System – If you plan to sell products on your website, then you will want to select a web hosting company that offers a shopping cart system. Most shopping cart systems are customizable for your website. However, you may want to hire a seasoned developer to handle implementing your system to make sure everything goes smoothly.

CGI/Perl Scripts – The most useful CGI script for new websites is for creating “email forms”. These allow you to collect information from your users via web forms and send it to yourself via email without paying premiums required for developing a database driven website. Some hosting companies offer these scripts, while others do not. It is generally recommended to work with hosting companies that support these types of forms because collecting information from users is one of primary purposes of most websites.

Different Ways of Hosting Your Site

It is generally recommended that you purchase web hosting from an established web hosting company. There are, however, several options for web hosting.

How To Register Your Domain

Written by Matthew Coers

Your site’s domain is “yoursite” in www.yoursite.com. Your site’s domain name is human friendly way computers find your site on Internet.

Behind scenes, there is an Internet Protocol (IP) address that looks like this: 216.239.37.99. The IP address is your website’s real address that computers understand and is associated with “human friendly” domain name you are already familiar with on a name server. Many times you can get to same website by typing in it’s IP address in place of domain name. Below is a chart with a few examples of this. Go ahead and try copying one of these IP addresses into your browser’s address bar and see for yourself. You will go to same place as you would if you typed in domain name!

When you type in www.yoursite.com, your request goes out on Internet to large servers called routers. The routers contain databases of domain names and IP addresses. Your request moves up chain of routers until it finds one that “knows” IP address for domain you are requesting. This process is known as “resolving” domain name. Essentially, you are looking for a computer that knows how to match up Domain name that you typed into browser to it's IP address.

Once your request is resolved (matched to an IP address), request is sent through various routers to server that contains your website’s files. That server is web server. The web server then processes request and sends results back to your web browser as a web page.

Of course, it isn’t really necessary that you understand all details of domain resolution. What is important is that you understand that your domain is a unique name that is associated with your website’s location on Internet, and your website’s location is a virtual location known as an IP address.

Registering a domain is exceptionally easy to do. When you register your domain, you specify length of time you wish to reserve it for. Typically longer term, less annual cost to you. The most difficult thing for most entrepreneurs is determining which domain to register. Many of best domains are already taken, so it takes some creativity to come up with a memorable domain that is not taken and is still applicable to your business.

As a general rule, if you are a U.S. company it is highly recommended that you pick a “.com” address. There are many more domains that are available in .net and .org flavors, but if you are trying to establish a brand that will be perceived by your visitors as a leadership brand, you really need to have a .com address.

Back in late ‘90s individuals and corporations began buying up all “good” domains. They did this on speculation that domains they were purchasing for $30 would one day be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Certainly a few lucky entrepreneurs made a quick buck this way, but generally speaking cost of purchasing thousands of domains quickly outweighed benefit of selling a few at an extraordinary profit. Many of these companies have since dumped a large portion of their inventory, and it is once again available on open market.